living without alcohol, living again

Main menu

Tag Archives: meditation

Several months ago deep darkness settled on me and I could not free myself of it. I also doubt if I wanted to free myself of it. Stepping into the light and then falling back again and again hurt so badly that I wondered if I would ever dare to live again.

As you might have read I visited the insurance doctor from the social security benefits I live off momentarily. That was the start of the darkest period in my live on earth. There was nothing really to keep me going other than the fact that life does not ‘just stop’. Suicidal thoughts were on my mind 24/7, I ate, drank, dreamed and lives darkness and destruction. I was emotionally not able to travel for more that 30 minutes out of my house: too much impressions, too afraid of the openness, not enough seclusion so my social life was limited to a few friends close by. Others I did not call or write because, well, because. My Facebook page however looked fabulous as ever.

I realise with writing this, the darkness is not far away enough yet for me to be comfortable and I should not be looking it up.

Long story not so short:

I found a shrink. I was looking for a female, older person with knowledge of EMDR. I got a younger male without knowledge of EMDR. And this is where it all started. :-D. Within one hour my transfer of ‘little brother (in the womb) I need to take care off otherwise I will destroy him’ reality was in fully in place. Very much a WTF experience. I never ever realised that this, what is called the ‘reliving the dream of the womb’ in which my womb twin brother died and from there on the transfer of all these emotions and reactions to it is actually REALLY REALLY happening. I thought it was something metaphorical untill it happened in me and with me and right in front of me with this young shrink! Baffling! It is really amazing. And it is pretty dark. Very much life and death. But I guess that is the process I once got stuck in and have to work through. Working on it. I was very happily surprised to find he is familiar with womb twin survivor syndrome and willing to listen to this. You can’t imagine how much emotional, psychological and physical stress even that tiny ‘not having to fight for my truth to be accepted’ releases.

I also…. found a physiotherapist who is more into relaxation techniques, releasing stress and trauma which is caught in the body. We speak once a week, do some very tiny (breathing) exercises which release a lot of stress too.

And….. hurrah hurrah…. my GP who is also a homoeopathic doctor found me ‘Stramonium’. Stramonium is a homeopathic medicine made from the Datura plant. PLEASE NOTE I got this diluted to the 1000th decimal, meaning that there is not one active molecule of this poisonous plant in what I ingested. So don’t go strolling about, eating the weeds in your garden when feeling depressed ;-). That is different.

By the way: if we take out all the space between the tiny thingies which build up a molecule of anything in this world, and the world itself, we end up with a cube the size of a sugar cube. All that ‘matter’ in the sugar cube does a sort of Lucky Luke trick in running around at high (!!!!) speed so it looks like it is VERY PRESENT and VERY BIG while actually it is very tiny. ❤ The rest is energy. So I think what we call ‘matter’ is not matter but energy, and the idea that matter is ‘the only thing which matters’ is not so very true as regular, homeopathy defying doctors would like me to believe. I have no issues believing that energy can be transferred in other ways than through matter. I mean…. how about love? And hate? That can actually be tangible and heal or hurt.

Datura Stramonium historically was and probably is somewhere, used as a natural medicine but mainly as a trip agent. It is also deadly poisonous at very small amounts so haha, not advising that.

Stramonium in the homeopathic version brought out the darkness in me. If you look at the plant itself and the vibes you get from the photo you might get an inkling of the quality of the darkness. First it became bigger but very clear. And it helped me find words for what I was feeling. I walked into another world where everything was dead as dead can be. Even a plastic cup in this world is more alive than the dead trees in the Stramonium world. Nothing, nothing, nothing responded, no vibes, no energy. Just nothing. No time, no wind, no movement, stillness, even the light which was there did not warm or brighten the place. Imagine a scene for a Goth movie with an abandoned castle frozen in a dark time and then in real life, as a reality. Well, dark. The British Homeopathic Organisation has a beautiful writing about this world. There is more online if you would be interested in this. Please do add the word ‘homeopathy’ to you search because you definitely don’t want to get mixed up in the real undiluted stuff.

First time I got handed the remedy the darkness actually spread through my hand and arm and I recognised it as that which was pressing on my shoulders. Long story short: I took the medicine several times, every time I would lighten up for a few days, even walk around ‘stoned’ and have significant dreams and strange experiences. Then I would fall back and within all that emotional movement some air, some light, some stress relieve came. No insights though. Normally with homeopathy I get some ‘Yeah! NOW I GET IT’ reaction but this did not happen. At first.

Before I took Stramonium my dreams were 1 to 1 comparisons to the video of Alan Walker’s song ‘Faded’. No people, no response, no nothing. If there were people they would be having their backs to me and not respond to anything. That’s ah, pretty alone.

But dreams changed! My god. PEOPLE!! IN MY DREAMS!!! For f! sake! So tiring…. every night there would be more people. And the colours would be so bright that it turned into a I don’t know, medieval summer/autumn festival. But, back to the people: the would be asking stuff, for advice, or just mentioning stuff and I would be giving advice, and helping, and giving and helping and giving and helping and waking up more tired than I went to bed.

That went on for several nights and in between I had a dark dream too – which I then experienced for its real quality: no connection, no life, no time, darkness – not peace but no interference either. And then there would be a people dream again. Effing hell! In one dream I helped/advised about 30 different people on what to do and what not to do. I felt they would die if I did not do what I did. Like my brother did, because I left him. Some of them took it and were really happy, others were like: “Why would I do that, that would change me and I want to hang onto the misery I got.” and others were like “Who is she?!” I would assume this is a perfect mirror of my world and my online world :-(.

Well, I am happy I got that mirror but more importantly, felt how all these worries of mine about other people and situations connected to me, and put their tiny little hooks in me and me putting large hooks in other people’s aura. Control issues much? Yes. I did not help my brother. He died. If I do not give it all, people die, companies go broke, production fails, my mother dies, my living brother gets attacked…. Patterns and energetic wires became clear and I could really feel them as almost solid lines to my aura. Very sickening to realise how energetically wrong and unsustainable this state of being and living is. Also very informative. 🙂 / 😦

Through a FB friend I got a list of co-dependency traits from Melody Beattie of 2 pages A4. All but 3 or 4 applied. So, yeah. Work to do.

I went to the physiotherapist and we spoke about this. When doing a breathing exercise I could let go of all the hooks and immediately I sank into my own body. My body became mine. 🙂 I started yawning and did not stop till about 10 minutes after. 🙂 I still yawn when I do breathing exercise when starting to meditate.

Obviously this insight will need practice to become a way of living but it is already very helpful. I finally got to do stuff again. Like ‘going out of the house for some activity’ or actually cooking something again. I did YouTube Tai Chi. Hahaha…. Within 20 minutes exercise in which I yawned continuously, I exploded with energy and my cat came over and started meowing in a concerned voice. She stood up against my leg then walked me to the bedroom and looked at the bed. That is her way of saying: you need to go to bed. She started doing that after her last kitten left the house and she usually she does that in the night. I think she had a point, I was all over the place. 🙂 So I lay down and took a rest.

So, I got part of my mojo back. And with that I see another pattern: whenever I get my mojo back it comes back in such an overwhelming way that I want to DO EVERYTHING and end up doing nothing because I can not decide and I can not settle. There is a saying in Dutch and it says ‘With you it is either running or standing still’ – very much a black and white womb twin survivor addictive personality thing. I wonder if this is the bi-polar hyperactivity thing they speak about in books on womb twin survivors often being bi-polar.

One way to guide that energy is to move in to a shopping spree on things about THE NEW subject. I bought books, again. It is a pattern. I hardly ever read more than 20-30 pages but I feel insecure in not having them.

Also, my will can not be guided yet. The loss of will power is a thing related to Stramonium as well. Only in very very tiny things like: putting air in my tires before biking, or twice now I put away the chocolate and started cooking. I also meditated 5 days in a row. Which is good. But I have no clue what to do with the empty mind and rest I get from it. No needs, no wants, no nothing. This is where the stressjunk in me kicks in and goes looking for trouble so I guess this needs some looking into. I have the idea it is related to the womb trauma but I am not sure how.

But I guess Rome was not built in one days so maybe I should give the issues with willpower some time. 😀

I am happy that I quit. The last months have been very dark and even though I am above zero now mood wise I still fear to fall back into the abyss. Not sure if I can go through that again. 😦 Life has become more interesting though now I see myself as somebody who has been in a traumatic situation and had developed coping skills from there which have now lost their use and need changing.

In the 4 years plus of not drinking I have been working towards being ‘sober’, sometimes I am, sometimes I am lost in my own darkness and need to self-medicate with chocolate, Netflix, chips and cheese. I have no clue what the heck I came to do on this earth, that is confusing sometimes and terrifying at other times. I am approaching 50 years of age and have no job. Even though in the past I have had no big difficulty obtaining a job, I have had a lot of difficulty keeping it. I notice now that this scares me a lot. But also…. I am running ahead. I am just, possibly, out of the woods, a few days above zero and I start running to try to plan a carreer. Better to stay with what is. There is so much information in this process of getting ‘out of’ the darkness. I guess I should take the same approach as I did when getting out of drinking: sit with what is, experience the feelings that pop up, see the patterns, be witness to myself. And for a change: ask for help. 😉

Hey, I did! To be true it was not so much for me but more to spare my friends because I felt I was losing them because I became too dark too often. I guess this is just another way of ‘feeling my way back into life’. 🙂 I still wish I could have done without it but I guess I would have never been introduced to these new insights so clearly if I had not. Not managing being grateful yet though. It still sucks. In curious way. 🙂

Life slowly returns to pre-ultra-active addiction phase. I am working at the level I did before I got into active addiction. And something is bugging me so I ask myself:

What would a woman who loves herself do? She would clean the room. 13:57 – 14:30 hours

I thought I could continue to write but ask myself: What would a woman who loves herself do and she would call a friend and ask for advice. Did so. Now I am back to the computer. And the sun is coming out. I need to change the mode I am in, not hang around here. Work is overwhelming. The external consultants think the deadline for the audit I am preparing for is not feasible but my boss is not happy to change it. I feel like I am being set up for failure. But pushing the audit out a few months, 3 would be reasonable, makes it so that it is after the end of my contract. So I feel I can not bring that up. Also, I feel that I am not making enough money for the responsibilities I have been given. Making double the amount would not at all be strange, I did not pay enough attention when applying, thought is would all be less difficult. I specifically do not make enough for the way I fill in the requirements for the function. But I feel I am in this tight spot where I say: “I am very good, do not earn enough, but I am not meeting the requirements and need more money and more time.” I have difficulty doing so. Don’t know how to deal.

Next thing: I think and fear the external consultant is gas lighting me to sabotage the project. The project is very extensive, includes a manual requirements for procedures to be set in place which is 200 page long. Those are only the descriptions. Each sentence can mean a day of work to get the procedure in place. They say it takes about 3 years to know the whole process. The consultant is helping but he does not give boundaries and priorities. He also contradicted himself the other day on a point where 2 weeks earlier he had said was ‘on of the most important procedures’ to show ‘we’ve got this system up and running for at least a few months’ while now he said ‘no need to do so’ and ‘go make those drawings’ (which in my eyes are of little importance) of which he says ‘well, everything needs to be done, this too’.

It brings me trouble because I do not want to work like I am checking a person and keeping a record. But he probably is. And the details are so many that I can not see through them anyhow so… Nasty.

And I need to keep sober. Not that I think drinking will solve anything but that is the person now who can, but only just, take care of me. If this continues there comes a time that I do not want to take care of me and that I want to forget and not feel.

I rewrote my ‘About‘ page today. Should have kept a copy of the old. Did not. The new page says that:

I compare being sober with a pressure cooker: I would build up pressure because of not/underdeveloped life skills, experienced pain and stress followed by ineffective coping techniques, then I would drink to let the steam off. Obviously the way to let steam off only got me into more trouble but it took me to age 44 while to find that out. In sobriety I think I need to:

1 learn to not build up steam and
2 let go of it differently.

I need to learn to not build up steam too much. I thought I did so by leaving my former job and looking for a new one. I guess I underestimated the level of overwhelm that this project brings. If I would still be a consultant myself I would be working around the clock to set things straight. But then I would be making 6-8 times my current salary AND I would be drinking to deal with the stress. I find it difficult to come to a

So yeah, I have, unknowingly been set up for failure. My boss admits that he has underestimated things. He has another project which is going haywire because the people he put on it are not doing their job. At some point last year he made 3 decisions which do not at all support the structure of the company and now it needs all his time to set these straight. I see that. Me being self-supporting makes it very easy to forget about my project. However… is it possible that he was as enthusiastic about them as he was about me in the first place? And now I am looking for a way to quench the fires and the overwhelming powers of shame about my assumed incompetence, of shame because I am being lied to by the consultant, of shame and pain about the memories of the culture of deceit I grew up in, of pain about not being in contact with my brother and SIL because of what happened due to that, of anger about my salary, of shame about my incompetence of dealing with salary, shame about me having been addicted and being in such a state at age 47, all of these fires are burning inside. First drink thought since ages came up last Friday. I was very happy that the friend I went out for dinner with drank tea instead of alcohol. I guess if she would not have done so I would have asked her to change to soft-drinks.

I now understand how I got myself into drinking in my early working time by being overtaxed and needing to rewind quickly. It is Sunday afternoon now. I have been thinking of work 24/7 for a few weeks now with breaks only when I sleep and even then I can dream about this.

I need an arm around me. The realisation that having a partner can make a change in this is big. A friend of mine is moving out-of-town, she and her boyfriend are buying a house of 500.000 Euro’s, it needs rework. I feel ‘left behind’. I suddenly feel all the work I put into getting sober and being sober has been stupid because I was stupid to become addicted in the first place.

You know, dealing with addiction is not a big thing when all goes well, it is difficult when I come to the point where I do not want to care anymore because I feel stupid. Where I think I have no value anyhow. Where I am convinced I have less right to be here because of who I am. A woman who loves herself would: love herself. But I can’t currently.

In my head I hear Anne (Ainsobriety) (hi!) saying ‘compassion, show yourself some compassion’ and I realise I do not do that. Now I step outside me experiencing this attack on me and try to be the observer. The observer sees a very frightened girl who is afraid to fail bully another with shame, denial and all types of emotional abuse. The observer thinks I identify with the one being bullied. I wonder who the fuck the bullied person is. I do not recognise me from the outside. Strange this is. Don’t worry if you can’t follow, I don’t understand it either. I’m thinking I am dissociating in 2 steps here.

The frightened girl is very effing frightened. Need to go talk with her. She is very afraid to fail. Feels like she will die if she fails. Wonder where this comes from. I only remember my father once saying “If I would have built this faulty bridge I would have committed suicide.” He meant it. I was going to write I can not understand where the fear of failure would come from but my mother was a perfectionist. My whole photo album reads like a manual to the defected daughter. A lot of criticism hidden in wittyness. I can’t even read it anymore. My brother and SIL laughed at me when I mentioned that I found this painful. Adding insult to injury. And I do the same to me: not taking me seriously, not valuing myself, killing/selfdestructing when confronted with possible failure. Patterns are difficult.

Meditation helps. Plan to wake up half an hour early to meditate again during working days too. Meditation makes that everything I attach to; thoughts, opinions, fears, feelings of all kinds sort of seem unimportant, become unimportant and it helps me to energetically set to zero. I used to not know ‘how’ to meditate but the navel staring of the last years has helped me greatly to find what I was looking for; it helped me see how I attach to things, to feelings, where they, well ‘enter’ my ‘aura’ for lack of another word.

Hmm, don’t feel like writing anymore. Suddenly all of this seems superfluous. It is not. I know that. It is a log and it is a set time for me to force myself to check upon my sobriety. To see what drives me, what puts me in (e)motion. People say ’emotions are not facts’ – which is often true. But emotions will fuck up sobriety – which is why I think it is a good idea to keep a good watch on them. 🙂

A woman who loves herself would now read the book which she has wanted to read for the whole week. Turn off the computer and wifi to ensure better quality of sleep later. And make the bed now, not at the moment she goes to bed so she then dislikes herself for putting it off. So, that is what I will do. 🙂

I am happy that I quit. I find going through this time very informative. I need to take care that it does not take me over and I need to delegate and take care of the girl who is so afraid of failure. She is afraid she will lose me because I have left her. This is such strange territory. With these descriptions I am ‘just’ phrasing how it feels/what it looks like, in order to give voice to what is happening, putting words to what I feel, how I experience things helps me to see and experience things. Or maybe it helps me to take seriously what I experience. Not sure. Guessing this is a phase I need to go through. Because it is here. Let’s see what it brings. What is in the way, is The Way. I can only get out by going in. 🙂

Sorry for an unfulfilling post with no ‘solutions’ to yet another drama. :-D. I’m off to read, make beds and meditate. Better than staring at a screen. Wishing you a good night/week.

Just wanted to post this because it somehow very much reminds me of my life.

Work is good, I am happy that I quit because I could never ever have done this job while drinking. My boss told me yesterday that he was very, very, very happy that he had hired me. I guess that is a compliment which also stretches out to me. 🙂 So that is good.

He has the same name as the nice guy I fell in love with at my former workplace. Sigh. And then the gods started playing with my head by sending in 2 other guys with the same name this week. So every morning I meditate and in that meditation discover if and how I am attached to the nice guy and let it go. In that letting go, which actually looks a LOT like what I did while quitting drinking, I realise that I am alone and can stand on my own two feet. Also: that the sort of addictive way I have in dealing with guys is, well, addictive. It is mist I create to not be clear, a ‘get away’ from what is. And the funny thing is: when I cut all these energetic threads I actually feel better so I do not understand the ‘need’ for it. Apart from me having an addictive personality and having difficulty with being at ease. 😀

So yeah, happy that I quit. Spending Christmas on my own. Need to really take 100% care of me and me said: not going to visit the family because I don’t feel like it and I need all my energy to cope with this new function. It has nothing to do with the function before. I did half a day of production work this week, just to get an idea. The rest was office/procedures/speaking with consultants on the trajectory we’re setting up. Not sure if we will get the certification.

From what I have learned discipline and procedures need to be way tighter than they are in this new factory. Which is why I asked my boss to set out a vacancy to try get two of the employees from my former work in the company. It is a bit tricky: that would be almost half of the former companies staff and the former company is a customer of my current company so… tricky. But then again, these guys have been looking for an opportunity to leave and now it is here. Not sure if they will follow, I have the feeling things have changed there since I left. But is would be good. Would safe me a LOT of work in training and get them the job they were looking for, not sure if they like the colleagues though, the whole company is so diverse that about 20% speaks Dutch, 30% English and the rest something Englishlike or another European language. German I speak, Spanish I can follow to understanding what it is about, Italian a little less but Polish? Pfff…. Not sure if it is going to work, my intentions are not entirely selfish so I feel I am being manipulative so, well, that is never good.

My head/concussion has not been bothering me but I need to really take it easy in the evening, back to having no evening appointments otherwise ‘the light turns off’ in my head. Lucky me: I have flexible working hours! And a day extra to spend because I started working a day before my contract started, and… a 36 hour workweek. So! Hey! I can sort of have 7 hour workdays and that = good for me. Still I have about 4 kilo of certification procedures to read over Christmas, getting paid for it though, not gonna do free overtime for this salary. He’s got my consultancy brain for 500 more than a production worker. Well, I should have stood up when he offhandely offered that. In hindsight it was sooo clear that he was open to negotiating. Ghegheghe…. my head was somewhere else: can I do this job, is it not too early, is it not too difficult? Actually I’m fine with the salary. I also realise that I do have to really keep a tight grip on my priorities and focus otherwise I will drown in the procedures, rules and fear of not being able to do it.

Just now that I am writing it has turned the 25th of December and I am 28 months sober. Happy that I quit. With the meditating I experience a lot of progress again in myself, I needed that, I was getting worried about the lack of clarity I was experiencing, the addictive mind was looking too much for distraction. I meditate till my mind is still and then a little longer. I got into a daily routine, then the job happened and now I need to incorporate this routine in my every days schedule again. Working on it. 🙂

Sending holiday greetings from The Netherlands. I am happy that I quit. I am happy that you quit. If you did not, I would really appreciate if you will consider quitting (again).

Now that I am back in a job which is more at my level I am feeling less ashamed about my drinking and what I ruined with that. Still pissed off about wasting away a lot of money by not working and living of my savings/inheritance. I have difficulty looking that in they eye. 😦 I actually feel I can only be totally cleaned of ‘this’ when I earn back that money. I am thinking this prolonged shame is something which going through the 12 steps might change. But I am not ready to let go, know that too. I feel the shame is some sort of ‘security blanket’ in a negative way. Well, by the time it is time to let go, it will go. 🙂